


last place we move

by macabre



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Mental Instability
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-30
Updated: 2013-04-30
Packaged: 2017-12-10 01:17:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,614
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/780097
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/macabre/pseuds/macabre
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An accident effectively lobotomizes Will's empathy. Hannibal is pleased, then not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	last place we move

Will stays in bed so long the bruises and the cuts are long gone by the time he wakes up. Hannibal stays, of course he stays. He sits by Will’s bed and reads, but never aloud. Crawford, Bloom, and a few others from the bureau stop by and leave such sentiments as flowers and cards, things Will would hate. 

One investigator even brings a jarred piece of evidence from his last crime scene. Fingernails from the killer Will caught, torn off by himself before he was caught. Crawford takes this back with him.

He takes it all in silently and no one questions his place there, even when one week is two then three. Severe head trauma. Multiple brain bleeds. Miracle he survived, and now he’s on a ventilator. Machines doing all his work.

Will would hate it, and yet, no one discusses it. It would be so easy for Hannibal - one move with the wires, one syringe into the bloodstream. He could make it so easy for them all, much easier on Will.

They know he will never wake up. Not now. It’s been a month, and Hannibal is sick of looking at the monstrous shape of his mouth around the tube. He plans, but plans require waiting. The nurses are diligent, the doctors well paid. Will’s curls get longer and streak with grey. Hannibal gives him a shave. 

He finds Will’s dogs new homes. He hires someone to keep the house tidy. The man’s will was appallingly made, something Bloom has taken upon herself to sort through. Hannibal keeps out of these matters.

It’s Thursday. On Monday next, things will be right. Hannibal just has to wait.

Saturday afternoon, Will wakes up. Hannibal isn’t there, but gets a call from both Crawford and Bloom within five minutes.

“Apparently he’s conscious,” Crawford says.

“He’s not well, Dr. Lector,” Bloom leaves a message while he driveds. “He’s...different. Not Will.”

Will wakes up at 2:27 PM. By 2:29 PM, two nurses have entered the room and moved to calm him down. He panics, yanking at the tube in his throat. When they attempt to restrain him, he tears several long gashes down one’s face like claw marks and breaks two fingers on the hand of the other. 

Hannibal sees the man with scratches on the way to Will’s room less than forty minutes later. He is impressed. Inside his room, they’ve removed his offensive trachea tube, but Will’s breathing is very labored. Like a beast. His eyes dart back and forth. He squeezes them shut. Opens them again.

Crawford leans against the opposite wall, seemingly keeping his distance. For the best, then.

“Will,” Hannibal greets his friend. Will just breaths harder, hands flexing at his side. Eyes rolling around.

They knew that if he woke up, there was no telling what kind of condition he’d be in. Mentally abled, disabled. Physically abled, disabled. 

“He’s having problems with speaking,” Crawford offers. “Seems to understand us just fine though.”

Hannibal thinks this conversation might be better away from Will, but they have it anyway.

“Memory’s in tact. Maybe not everything else.” 

Frowning, Hannibal moves to take Will’s hand - give it a squeeze? No. Just a confirmation that he’s awake and alright. Feel the blood under his skin. Smell it. It runs.

Will digs his nails in so tight, Hannibal contemplates losing his hand right then. He grimaces as he tries to extract it. There are gashes in it like the nurse’s face. They bother him little. 

The way Will looks at him now - well, Hannibal knows exactly what Crawford’s speaking of. Will is wild, and savage. Beautiful. His eyes are a viciousness the likes which he has not seen before. Angry. He’s angry about the accident? No. He’s just angry.

“When can we move him?” Hannibal asks. Crawford chokes behind him.

“Look at him. We can’t move him. He’s a liability now, to himself and others!”

“I am fully aware that he will need an eye on him. He is more than welcome to stay with me until he feels more like himself.”

This argument goes on for days. Crawford thinks it’s a disgusting idea, but Bloom believes Will will respond best to Hannibal in time. Will doesn’t react well to new players - new doctors or psychologists. For the best, she says, but she looks so defeated when she says it.

Taking Will home requires something similar to baby-proofing. He’s not sure exactly how fragile Will’s psyche is, but best not have any temptations lying about. He takes away anything passable for a weapon, including his beloved knife sets, and stocks his freezer with benign foods. 

Will doesn’t enjoy the car ride; he opens and shuts his eyes with such frequency and force that Hannibal is afraid he might be having a seizure. Seizures. The man slumps low into the passenger seat, so low other drivers wouldn’t be able to see him. His breathing is labored. He never says a word.

Inside the house, Will becomes a puppet, requiring Hannibal to move him from dinner table to lounge to bed. This ends with time - perhaps pain was partly to blame. Hannibal mixes the doctors’ orders in with his own to manage Will’s recovery.

It’s after Will’s recovered mobility that things become difficult to manage. If Will had certain sensitivities before, they are now tenfold. He hates the pitch of water in Hannibal’s shower, he can’t stand the smell of things Hannibal can’t smell himself, and it’s impossible to tell from day to day if Will is receptive to any kind of touch to alleviate these things. Will’s usual reactions vary from dropping to the floor wherever he is and refusing to move, or pacing and tearing chunks of hair out.

The dogs help. Hannibal retrieves two of Will’s old dogs and introduces them slowly to the house and their new Will. With the dogs present, Hannibal feels better about leaving Will alone for periods of time. He sees patients again, and whenever he returns to his bedroom he usually finds Will and the dogs on the floor, piled one on top of another. 

With time, it becomes increasingly clear that Will can talk just fine. Perhaps now he just finds he has nothing to say. Quietly, he’ll ask his dogs to move over. More quietly, he’ll ask Hannibal not to make that dish again.

It seems this Will is more sensitive to Hannibal’s culinary specialities. Any time Hannibal feeds him something redder than chicken, Will both psychically and verbally protests. Hannibal squeezes any feelings of anger down and begins frequently making separate meals for the two of them.

It amuses Hannibal to watch Crawford interact with Will. His emotional support lacks the delicacies Will requires, and Will tires of the man shortly after arrival. He sinks lower and lower in the chair Hannibal places him in, until he looks like nothing other than human putty. Crawford takes the hint and leaves. Bloom is more difficult.

“I think it’s time for Will to leave,” she says, but Will is in the room and she’s talking over him. 

“I think Will can make the decision himself. Will, do you want to leave?”

But Will doesn’t talk to Bloom, or Crawford, or Katz. He shakes his head and rummages for something in the fridge. Moving things around in order of his preference, Hannibal sees later. 

Part of Hannibal is ready to give Will up; when he had woken with such animosity in eyes, his whole continence, Hannibal thought it was time. He would shoulder this Will up until he might also partake with him a new life where they were equals, but this new Will smells death on Hannibal and avoids him whenever he returns from a hunt.

There have been incidents - men who’ve gotten too close, a poor child who screamed too long. Will’s patience and empathy are gone. He grinds his teeth in order not to hit anything. Several times Hannibal finds Will’s knuckles busted open, once with glass in a hand. 

His teeth need the most attention, but Hannibal dares not take him to a dentist. He buys a mouthguard that fits Will well enough, and carries it with him most days. 

The days turn long, and Hannibal no longer lives the life he carved for himself. There are moments Will is entirely worth it - late at night in bed when Hannibal hasn’t cleaned all the blood from under his nails, and still his companion grips his hands with ferocity, not minding for the moment that some of it has rubbed off on him. Other days when Hannibal thinks of his sister, and Will suddenly sits on the floor, head on his knee. 

Hannibal knows not all of Will’s empathy is gone like Crawford thought. It’s true he can no longer function as he once did - the accident having ripped it from his brain, but he is also not the blunt object Hannibal dreamed of once. They are at an impasse - neither can move forward, and yet Hannibal doesn’t know how to move back. 

Will’s hair is as grey as his now. Hannibal cuts it for him, long enough he still has some pull on it. When Will takes the scissors from his hand, Hannibal doesn’t fight it. 

Will turns them in his hands under the sparse light of their bedroom. Just as suddenly he jams them into his thigh. 

“It feels right, doesn’t it?” He asks, later that night after Hannibal has bandaged the wound. Would he have stopped him if he saw it coming? Did he see it coming?

Certainly. 

“Yes. It does.”

Hannibal puts all his knives back in the kitchen. 


End file.
